A BARRIER OF SAND
‘Which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea, by an everlasting ordinance, which it cannot pass.’
Jeremiah 5:22 (R.V.)
I. What an insignificant atom is a grain of sand!—But God has chosen to arrest the advance of the mighty billows by a barrier of sand-grains. Let the ocean chafe as it will, it cannot pass its defined limits. It may destroy the solid masonry of human construction, but it is foiled by a bank of soft sand.
II. So it has always been in the history of the Church.—The pride of the persecutor has been arrested by the sufferings of men, women, and children, who have had no more strength in themselves than a bank of sand-grains, but have succeeded in exhausting the might of their foes by passive endurance. The persecutions of the Roman Empire were finally renounced because they actually promoted the cause they were intended to destroy. By the weak things of this world God brings to nought the things that are reckoned mighty.
III. The weakest things that God has made are invincible.—What, then, may not those who are strong in His strength do! Who would not tremble at His presence, since He can do so much with what man despises? What a great God is this, Whose weakness is stronger than men!
What cannot His power accomplish for me,
Who made of soft sand a strong bar to the sea!
Illustrations
(1) ‘The perversity of the human heart is beyond belief. It is not moved by the manifestation of God’s power in the majesty and beauty of Nature as in the soft sand-barrier to the waves. It is not touched by reverent gratitude for God’s beneficence in giving the appointed weeks of harvest. It is only glad when prophet and priest are infected by the common degeneracy, and cease to remonstrate. Let us seek to hear and speak, not what is palatable, but what is profitable unto salvation.’
(2) ‘What a delightful metaphor this is which reminds us that God has made the soft sand a perpetual barrier against the sea! It is not necessary for Him to resist the waves with a parapet of cliffs; sand will serve His purpose equally well. It makes one think that the people of God, lowly and pulverised though they be, will yet suffice to resist the onset of the mighty waves of Satan’s power. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, God ordains strength.’